Burney's Bytes will focus primarily on the local preps sports scene, but will also touch on some college and pro athletics, mostly in regards to athletes who hail and have played high school sports in Oakland County. My goal for the blog is to be conversational and anecdotal, a more relaxed and free formal take on high school athletics than you see in regular game day coverage.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Intentional Walk

Recent Walled Lake Northern grad Ted Lilley, one of Oakland County's best two-sport athletes of the past couple of years, has decided to walk-on the baseball team at Oakland University.

Lilley was all-conference on the diamond and on the football team while at Northern.

A standout outfielder, pitcher and lead-off hitter as well as a terror on the base paths for the school's baseball squad, Lilley led the Knights to a 25-9 record and a surprising city championship. Etching his name into the Northern history books, he broke the school record for steals to boot.

On the gridiron, he was a versatile star, lining up at running back, wide receiver, kick-punt returner and in the secondary.

About Me

Scott M. Burnstein grew up in Bloomfield Hills and attended school at Birmingham Roeper, where he earned multiple varsity letters in both basketball and baseball, and has been following the local preps scene since the 1980's. Mr. Burnstein attended Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he received a bachelors of arts degree in political science, and the John Marshall Law School, in Chicago, Illinois, where he got his Juris Doctrate. He has covered high school sports for both the Detroit Free Press and the Oakland Press, and is the author of the 2007 regional best-selling book, The Motor City Mafia - A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit, Family Affair - Greed, Treachery, and Betrayal in The Chicago Mafia (2010), Mafia Prince - The Crazy Phil Leonetti Story (2012) and The Detroit True Crime Chronicles (2013).